


the ace of clubs

by springty



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Guilt, carmillas not actually here really but you know, she's pretty relevant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springty/pseuds/springty
Summary: jonny d'ville pushed dr. carmilla out of an airlock. right?well, maybe not.according to most of the crew, yes. but brian? brian knows what actually happened to her.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59





	the ace of clubs

Jonny d’Ville was the one who pushed Dr. Carmilla out of the airlock. Right? If you asked most of the crew aboard the Aurora, they would say “yeah, probably.” If you asked the first mate himself, he would say, “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I do that? I mean, sure, she deserved it. I’m glad to be rid of her. I’m grateful to whoever did it, but it obviously wasn’t me. Sure, I don’t have an alibi, what does that matter? I didn’t do it, but good riddance.” 

If you brought up the incident to Drumbot Brian, however, he would suddenly go stiff. He would tell you, as level-headed as ever but somehow a bit off, that he didn’t know what had happened to Dr. Carmilla, and that he did not wish to discuss it.

His responses didn’t raise suspicion to most of the crew. Of them, Brian was generally considered one of the less likely suspects for what happened to the doc, and they tended to agree it was Jonny anyway. The only one who seemed to suspect that Brian wasn’t telling the whole truth of the matter was Ivy, because nothing got past her.

She approached him about it, in private. “Brian?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to discuss something with you.” He looked at her expectantly. “It’s… it’s about Dr. Carmilla,” she added.

“Oh.” His face fell. “I don’t know-”

“There’s a 99% chance you’re lying about not knowing what happened to her,” she deadpanned.

“...oh.”

“Look, it was Jonny, right? You don’t have to lie to protect him. We know it was him.”

Brian blinked at her. “Jonny,” he repeated. He considered, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “What’s the probability that it… _wasn’t_ Jonny?” he asked tentatively.

She looked at him with a bit of surprise. “15%, rounding up.”

“I see.”

Ivy frowned, but didn’t push it, and turned and walked away from him.  
  


Ivy had been right that he was lying. He did know what happened to Dr. Carmilla; he thought about it often, in fact. What Ivy hadn’t been right about, however, was her assessment that he was lying for Jonny’s sake. He knew who pushed her out of that airlock, and, despite everyone else’s impression, it wasn’t Jonny d’Ville.

He had been switched to Ends Justify Means when it had happened. He couldn’t remember when the switch had been flipped, or by whom, but based on past experiences he blamed Jonny. He just knew that if no one had touched it, nothing would have happened, and Dr. Carmilla would still be on the ship. On Means Justify Ends, he couldn’t have fathomed doing what he did to her. But it felt right when he had done it. 

He knew what Dr. Carmilla did to the crew; Brian wasn’t exempt from it himself. He knew she cared for them, but he also recognized that she didn’t treat them as well as she should have. He tried not to resent her, he knew she was doing her best, but the rest of the crew wasn’t so generous with her.  
Especially not Jonny. Jonny, who had been with Dr. Carmilla the longest and dealt with even more from her than the rest of them. He didn’t hate the doctor near as much as he claimed to; he might not have hated her at all. But he didn’t speak fondly of her when anyone else was around to listen, and Brian could hardly blame him for that. Jonny was not fond, to say the least, of the “gift” of immortality that the doctor had given him. Jonny’s overblown denial of pushing Dr. Carmilla out of the airlock only confirmed for most of the crew that he was responsible, and Brian didn’t think that was an accident on Jonny’s part. The first mate of the Aurora wasn’t as stupid as most would have believed. Jonny _wanted_ them to think he had done it, and it took Brian a while to understand why. But when he thought about the way Jonny spoke about the doc, how he said she deserved what she had gotten, he began to understand. He got the impression that, even though Jonny hadn’t been the one to do it, he wished he had.

But despite what he would have the crew believe, Jonny didn’t push Dr. Carmilla out of the airlock. No, that came down to Brian, the last one the rest of the crew would have suspected.

It was, he’d believed at the time, for the good of the rest of the crew. The way Jonny argued with her in front of everyone as though he were trying to prove something, the way Nastya flinched when she stepped too close - it was obvious. Anyone concerned with the greater good, as surely Brian had been, would have reached the same conclusion. She had to go.

And so, when he found her meditating in the airlock, and there was nobody else around, he pushed her.

He didn’t feel guilty when he’d done it. No, the guilt came later, when he’d been switched back to Means Justify Ends, and he couldn’t come to grips with what he’d done. _How could I?_ And the guilt was _corrosive_ , the guilt ate at him from the inside out as it always did after he’d done things like this (he never got used to it, coping with having done things as a different man that he now thought unthinkable). _You of all people should know what you’ve condemned her to_ , he told himself. _How could you?_

But he couldn’t tell the crew the truth, regardless of his guilt. He felt, somehow, that they would be hurt by the knowledge of what he had done, perhaps in varying ways between them. Brian was not a man to keep secrets, but this, with an alarming ease, became an exception. What he had done stayed between himself and the Aurora, the only other soul, if she could be called such, who knew what really happened to the doctor.

And so, when he was asked what he knew about what happened to Dr. Carmilla, he gave a carefully rehearsed lie.

“ _I will not point fingers and lay blame. I do not know how it came to pass that Dr. Carmilla left this vessel, whether by fair means or foul, and so I will not engage in this painful discussion. I hope she did not suffer, and that we may forgive the perpetrator of this deed_.”


End file.
